12 Aug 2013
The day
started slow, the sky was still overcast and the mountain tops could not be
seen. We decided to spend some time at
the beach at La Push, a town on the Pacific Ocean, and then head down to the
Campsite at Pacific Beach about 200 miles (as the crow flies) down the coast –
about 300 miles driving distance. The
beach was cover with driftwood, not the driftwood one normally sees, we are
talking BIG trees that drifted here from somewhere. I can’t think of how they would have gotten
there – it must have been one hell of a big storm.
Yesterday
we were at the town of Neah Bay in the Makah Nation and today in the La Push in
the Quileute Indian Reservation. The
peoples of both Reservations have suffered the same economic downturn that we
have seen in Michigan in the last 6 years.
The difference is that they have seen it for the last couple of hundred
years. Although it is a lush beautiful area,
the people of the reservation seemed to just barely scrape off a living. There are no large modern subdivisions and
housing, just simple homes, many of them in disrepair, no industry, no
businesses (except of a few mom and pop stores). Based on the number of signs on the roads, there
does seem to be a big campaign against drugs and drinking. The town of Forks (population 3000+) is no
better off. I was taking to a
representative of the Chamber of Commerce and she was telling me that the town
was dying. If it wasn’t for the Twilight
books and movies, she felt this town might have been a ghost town by now.
On the
way to the coast we had a little hike on the Sol Duc River trail on the north
side of the Olympic National Park. We
met up with a fellow named Andrew May, from the Peninsula Daily News (and
President of the Port Angeles Chamber of Commerce. We were at a point in the river where salmon
have to jump up a short water fall (we did not see any salmon this time of
year) but Mr. May decided he had to take a dip in the crystal clear river. The water could not have been more than 40
degrees. I remember doing the same thing
in Glacier National Park about 25 years ago and to this day I still feel the
chill of the water. Here is a link to his dip that I put in youtube.
Tomorrow
we will visit several of the beaches south of here and maybe take a hike in the
Hoh Rain Forest of the Olympic National Park.
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